


Charlie

by DeltaRaeRunAway



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Charlie Brown?, Christmas!, F/M, PB&J, Princess Ariel - Freeform, Redhead Meryl, Rudolp the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Sleeping the days away..., The Great Gatsby - Freeform, heartbreaks, school days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 22:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1618772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeltaRaeRunAway/pseuds/DeltaRaeRunAway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She would greet him like they were in a movie, a romantic comedy where the two main characters are destined to be together but too young, too naïve and foolish to know.</p><p>God, did he know then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charlie

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for quite a while in bursts of inspiration and muse.
> 
> This is wholly based off of the Ingrid Michaelson song "Charlie" (bonus points if you get the correlation between I.M. and M/C). Its lyrics are most definitely tailored to the pitiful story of 'Charlie Brown' (though I've never seen definitive evidence of this...) but when I hear Charlie, I think White, not Brown! (Although a very interesting parallel--Charlie WHITE, Charlie BROWN--is this just me reading much too far into mere coincidences?! Oops...)
> 
> Anyway, some of the lyrics are taken so literally and others with just a grain of salt. I really hope you all enjoy this Meryl/Charlie fic. Happy reading adventures!

**Charlie, don't let the girls hurt your heart**

 

 _She was sixteen at the time, the elder by a few months but to him it seemed like she was miles and miles away. It was the first time he’d spoken,_ really _spoken, to her since the day she aged by that one monumental year, and neither of them would have selected these terms in advance had this been scheduled._

_It was a holiday off from school, a prolonged weekend and one of the sacred sets of days without rigorous practice. Meryl had scowled less than a year ago when he’d made an offhanded comment that she, as a girl, was inevitably some kind of ‘master of love’. Now all she could do was grimace while he cried his heart out to her in his childhood bedroom._

_“It’s so—Mer, it’s nothing but a cliché and I know, I_ know _it was stupid of me to think that this would actually happen, but I didn’t think it would fall through so soon—I, I…”_

_He need not have said anything more. She gently pried his fingers from their clenched position to his bedpost and realigned them with hers, so that their hands laced together. “I know. And I know you know. Don’t—look, I don’t know why you’d want to take advice from me, but—“ Exasperated as she was, mostly with herself and the girl who’d first broken Charlie’s heart, seeing his puppy-dog eyes widen at the prospect of getting advice from Meryl made her realize that he genuinely cared about what she was going to say, and so she’d better make it worthwhile. Her tone softened a little, a voice typically reserved for the dogs that she would always visit and never, to any avail, own. “Don’t let girls hurt your hurt. It’s stupid, like you said. Learn from this—hey, OK? Next time, come to me first, and we can talk. I miss talking. Do you think that maybe this hurts so much because I didn’t hear the details as you lived them? Because,” she got significantly quieter, “I do. You’re worth so much more than…_ her _.” Her last word was edged with acid. “Don’t let it get to you. You have so much—you are so much, and a broken heart will mend in time if you let it.”_

_“Mer? You know how we used to hang out every single day? You know, before ‘her’? Can we…I miss that.”_

_“Of course. Say the word and I’m there. And guess what, the rules apply to me, too. Don’t ever let me hurt your heart. You tell me anything and everything. You just say the word and I will.”_

_“You will_ what _, exactly?”_

_“Anything you need me to.”_

_Talk about one hell of a pep talk._

 

**Don't let the angry boys tear you apart**

_“What do you mean, you won’t work with us? Are you for real, Charlie? We’ve always worked together, man. Do you_ want _me to fail? Is that what you want—your idea of a joke or something?”_

_“What? No, of course not, it’s just that I’ve never had a class with Meryl before and it just makes sense that we’d work together, being that we spend so much time together as it is…hey, man, come on. You’ll do fine! It’s one report, how hard can that be?”_  
  
The livid boy snorted. “Says the reigning science fair champion. What ever happened to ‘bros before hoes’?”

_That’s when Charlie couldn’t take it anymore._

_“Charlie!” Meryl cried, running over to him after having had a word with their teacher. “Why would you punch him? You’re such a good student, why would you seek to get in trouble?” She was such a mom._

_He smiled, despite the bespectacled teacher sternly dialing the office on the classroom phone. “Just a social experiment. Apparently, the guy code only lasts as far as a straight-A semester. Call my mom for me after class? She’s going to flip.”_

**I know you're tired of not fitting' in**

When he was younger, this was the mockery that he could not escape (but he took it in stride):

_“Charlie’s a_ dancer! _He does_ ballet _, like little girls!”_

_“Bet he wears a tutu.”_

_“Yeah! A pink, frilly one.”_

_“With a princess bow and_ flowers _on it!”_

_“Who ever heard of a boy dancing in a_ costume? _With a_ GIRL!”

_“Hey, Charlie, do you have a_ crush _? Is that why you dance with that girl?”_

_“Charlie and Meryl, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”_

_(“Knock it off!”) (“Meryl, just go away. I want to eat lunch alone. No, I didn’t ask for your help! No, Meryl, I’m sorry—“)_

But as he got older the meaningless jabs turned into ruthless taunts and heartbreaking rejections.

_“What’s up? Check out the gayest guy in Michigan. Just come out of the closet already, Charles, you’ve already been televised wearing everything in it.”_

_“Wait, you dance? Like, dance-dance? Yeah, um, I just remembered—I actually have plans that night.”_

_“Oh, sorry,_ now _you have time for me? Well why don’t you just take good old MERYL to the dance. She always gets to spend time with you. We’re over.”_

_“And by the way? If you two aren’t together, you must be gay. Don’t deny it. Either way, you suck and I can’t believe I ever went out with you. Let’s catch up at a reunion in ten years and see what you’ve become, with no social skills and a girl attached to your hip. Abandonment issues much?”_

**But it’s not fitting in that will help to begin to show you your beauty**

_“We’re going to be in the Olympics,” Charlie announced proudly into the microphone of a local news station covering the junior regional ice dancing competition._

_Some of the skating moms who overheard chuckled in the background. ‘That’s what they all say’ was surely running around in a loop in their thoughts._

_True, some of the parents would admire his eagerness and assured nature, but nobody actually thought it could happen. It’s a pipe dream, right? Not anybody just takes it to the Olympics. Not every has that kind of luck studding their stars._

_But hey, beauty is all about ethics and can’t hold a candle to spite. That’s why, even though he knew what these moms were thinking that day, Charlie’s smile never faltered. He had begun to see his own beauty within himself._

 

**Where is the redheaded girl?**

_Well, for most of her life she’d been a brunette, and their coaches had always said that the start and finish of a program should be the finest moments with the most dazzling choreography and emotion, because people always remember the first and the last thing they experience of something._

_Applying this to his real life, Charlie did strive to only see Meryl as she had been naturally born and not how she tried to be portrayed, but sometimes in his mind he referred to her as that redheaded girl that she once tried to play._

_It made him feel less weird when he would imagine a life for them together, beyond figure skating._

**The one with the green lunch box**

_Before the couple had the freedom to take temporary flight away from the corridors of their school and when they were nearing a competition and on a strict diet, Meryl and Charlie would bring their lunches, packed religiously. Meryl’s reflected her personality, her lifestyle in every sense. She had receptacles of impeccable sizes to fit whatever healthy morsels she had to nibble on. They were positioned perfectly in her lunch box, a non-dented rectangle that was neither flashy nor forgettable. She never failed to pack her own utensils—the classy, metallic ones of course—no plastic cafeteria sporks for her. Everything in its place was kind of her mantra, and you could always see the deliberation and diligence that went into packing her lunch, almost like an architect building a mini model of a structure._

_She almost took packing her lunch too seriously, but then…_

**Even though you had a brown paper bag**

**Sandwiches hard as rocks**

_…Then there was Charlie._

_Charlie, on the other hand, opted for more of a last-minute approach. He tried, really, he did, but when something as trivial as eating healthily was on the radar it kind of fell to the bottom of his agenda and he tended to scramble for a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich (protein and fruit), a chocolate milk carton (dairy), and a gummy packet or granola bar of some sort at the last minute (only after Meryl reminded him, of course). So either his lunches were lacking in appropriate ratios of pyramid blocks or they lacked in composition (“Do you not skate, Charlie? Do you not know of the vitality that is composition?”). But still, she would always pack an extra apple in her pristine lunch for him, taking the time to fit it into her intricate culinary puzzle. When they had weekends at the rink, she would make their lunches because it had gone the other way around once and she nearly choked on his rendition of ‘peanut-butter-and-marshmallow-fluff-and-nutella-on-graham-crackers’ main course. She swore it was the source of her cavities obtained a year later._

_It had occurred to Charlie, crossed his mind a time or two, that this must drive Meryl crazy, his inability to be self-sufficient enough to properly pack himself a lunch. So why did she put up with it?_

 

**Lunch was the happiest 45 minutes of the day**

_They would steal away, and make a break for the playground swings, the private corner in the library, and finally (in high school with Meryl’s license) take advantage of campus privileges and go to the farthest diner that they could reach in fifteen minutes._

_They would talk and talk, and find solace in one another, and regain hope in that the other was suffering, too._

**For the redheaded angel would glide your way and say:**

****

_She urged him to never speak about her short-lived redheaded phase, a cruel dare inflicted by some faux friends of hers at her first and last high school group slumber party._

_He obliged, but so as not to make it all too serious would poke fun now and then in a manner just so light as to say, ‘I respect you, but it’s not like to the point of thinking you’re an angel or something.’_

_That would surely let the cat out of the bag, wouldn’t it?_

****

**"Hello, hello, Charlie; hello"**

_She would greet him like they were in a movie, a romantic comedy where the two main characters are destined to be together but too young, too naïve and foolish to know._

_God, did he know then._

 

***

 

**Wake up,**

**It’s after 9 and now you're late**

_Try as he did, sleep was Charlie’s guilty pleasure. He’d divulged as much in an interview once, telling the newswoman, giddy with the idea of new idiosyncrasies to exploit, that his summer days when not spent at the rink were spent curled up in a bed or on a coach, lounging._

_He chose not to add that Meryl was a part of this activity, too. Not everything needed to be shared in such detail. And it’s not like they were, you know, doing_ it _. This was too far back in their relationship. They just cuddled up together, Meryl pawing at Charlie’s bare chest unconsciously as they napped and the heat got to her, making her whole body flush._

_Those days, he reveled sleep. When he could wake up to Meryl, or when he could wake up and go to the rink to be with her, despite whatever rigorous practice waited ahead for them._

_When school was brought into the picture, however, all bets were off. Sleep was not solace; sleep was a hoarded addiction. His mother had tried everything through the years, from no-snooze-button alarm clocks to donuts as incentive to threats of video game privileges suspended. Nothing worked. This was unfortunate, considering his penchant for never being late._

_Now, this was not like Meryl’s idea of never being late, this was a ‘slide in at the last possible moment unnoticed’ kind of late, while hers was induced by severe anxiety and forced her to be places a half hour earlier than necessary. But still, it made Charlie feel uneasy and lazy for the day if he failed to make a deadline. So, combining these two characteristics, mornings at the White household were definitely…interesting._

_Often times he would be left running for the bus as it sped away from him, hair bedraggled and curls containing God-knows-what from his pigsty room, half a bagel in hand slathered with cream cheese, and mouth still foaming from toothpaste not sufficiently rinsed out. His mother would just stand in the doorframe in her robe and curlers, and sigh, getting ready to get everybody else off to school. They, thankfully, were easier to micromanage._

****

**Yellow school bus is brimming with hate**

_Being on the school bus was the only thing harder than making the sprint towards it, in Charlie’s opinion. Meryl was lucky; she could walk to school until ninth grade, and it was only a year and a half later when she was able to drive Charlie with her. He’d always envied her ability to roll out of bed, looking gorgeous like she’d dreamt about Aphrodite, and walk off her fatigue with head held high, lost in her own thoughts and musical selections, with her matching backpack and lunchbox toted along._

_If you asked him at the time, he would never say he was being bullied. He’d vehemently decline this accusation, as a matter of fact. Later, though, he realized this form of verbal abuse he suffered on the daily up through high school was not standard ‘boys being boys’. Meryl didn’t know about it at the time, or she’d have stood up for him [and he was secretly grateful for this, because her tiny frame and hands on her nonexistent hips would only egg them on more] but when they had moved on to bigger and better things than public education and he mentioned offhandedly what went on during those bus rides, she would cringe and hold him close, alternating between this intimacy and standing up, pacing around whatever room they were in. He hated to say it, but she was so cute when she was livid. No wonder those boys wouldn’t have taken her seriously for a minute._

**They love your face when it’s blush as red**

_In his weakest moments, he wondered if their derisive laughs at Meryl would be more of an instigator than his crimson cheeks when he caught on to the jeers._

_Then he had to spend the day hating himself, drowning in guilt, for mentally throwing his partner under the bus._

**Get out of bed**

_One day, having had enough, Meryl staged an intervention._

****

**You're stronger now**

_Jacqui White had called her up one day at the end of junior year. Charlie wouldn’t budge, she said, he wouldn’t talk but just grunted. Told her it was the saddest thing she’d ever seen, and with the number of kids she’d had, she’d seen plenty of pitiful things so Meryl knew it was serious._

_Skipping breakfast, (she’d have a cereal bar later, in the car. “Yes, I promise, Mom!”) she rushed over to her home away from home away from home. (First the Davis residence, then the rink, and then Charlie’s house. She felt obligated to put the rink before his house, because truth be told, though she felt more at home at Charlie’s house, she_ did _spend more collective time at the rink.)_

_Over the years it had come to her that being firm with Charlie was the way to get things done. It had been hard for her at first, to be assertive with anybody, but with the help of coaches and professionals she’d gotten there and their relationship had changed for the better because of it. She always had time to be sweet Meryl later, to apologize and nurse his wounds._

_“Charlie White. What exactly are you afraid of? You have handled international ice dancing competitions—taking them in stride, I might add—, statewide debates, and that really big bug that one time in my shower. Now are you going to man up and get yourself out of this bed or am I going to have to drag you?”_

_Trying to keep up the no-nonsense appearance that Meryl was playing, Jacqui nearly had to leave the room to hide the smile that danced on her face. She couldn’t wait for the two of them to wise up and get together. They complained of having no one, but did they not realize that they had each other?_

 

_Every eve of Christmas Eve, they would have a pajama party at one house or the other and watch all of the specials: ‘Frosty the Snowman’, ‘Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!’ and their hands-down favorite, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’._

_There was that one line, what was it? Jacqui tried to recall._

_Ah, yes. “We can be independent together!” Was there a more perfect summation of Meryl’s relationship with her son? Unique-be-damned, there was something there, and she intended to bring it out. This wake-up call was only stage one._

**Get out of bed**

**You're stronger than before**

_By miracle or merely Meryl (but weren’t the two always synonymous?) Charlie’s spirits lifted that day. It surely helped that the following month he’d been accepted into a prestigious summer program for aspiring editorialist writers (in the period of two weeks where Marina and Igor would take their annual vacation; skating would never not come first again, he’d already made that mistake once and it had been nearly detrimental to both him_ and _his partner.)_

**Get out of your bed**

_“OK, OK! I already promised, didn’t I?”_

_“I want it in writing, mister. Besides, how do I know you’re not putting on a show and the moment I leave you’ll return to your blanket taco?”_

_“You really have a way with words, Mer. Ever consider poetry?”_

_“Ha ha. Flattery, as it happens, will get you nowhere. Now I have a very intriguing philosophy lecture waiting for me this morning and I know for a fact that your trig grade is slipping, so it would behoove you to stop making empty promises and get up on two feet.”_

_“You are nothing if not persistent,” he’d grumbled, swinging his feet out from under his down comforter and onto the cold, unforgiving, hardwood floor. “And a C is average, I’ll have you—oh! You know, for all the time we spend standing on ice my feet should be accustomed to freezing temperatures by now."_

_Meryl just smiled wryly, and pointed to her wrist, which to his credit, was bare and watch-less. “Time’s a ticking, Charlie.”_

_Then something occurred to him. “Hey, did my mom call you?”_

**Where is that redheaded girl?**

_Where was she, anyway? It had been three days since they’d last spoken, a record length. It was through no fault of his own—he’d initiated conversation, but she hadn’t been responding to his texts. Worried, paranoid, he’d gone so far as to call her house and nervously inquired about her whereabouts, trying to pass of his concern as nonchalant curiosity._

_“Charlie, honey, you know Meryl has a boyfriend now,” Cheryl had reminded him, as gently as possible. “She does spend quite a bit of time with him, so chances are if you’re looking, there she’ll be.”_

_Um, excuse me, thought Charlie; did she not understand how rude of her this was? Inconsiderate and unprofessional, really. She was essentially putting their skating relationship in danger by having another person in her life, and no, he was not being selfish or unfair in the slightest!_

**Even though you had a brown paper bag**

_“Déjà vu.” A soft voice that he knew all too well floated down and settled in his memory. He was familiar enough with her angelic tone to pinpoint it in a crowd, which is why he instantly knew something was wrong. It was laced with sadness, edged in a hard stoicism and tinged with a rasp not usually present. She’d been crying._

_Affirming his suspicions, he looked up, startled, from the book he was reading (_ The Great Gatsby _) and found her seated across from him at the bench with eyes puffy and red. She’d definitely been crying._

_Putting a bookmark in to secure his place, Charlie reached across the table to cover her hands in his._

_“Mer, what happened to you?”_

_Instead of directly answering, she made a droll remark. “It’s funny, isn’t it? This was me as you and you as me however many years ago. How the tables have turned.”_

_“Meryl.” He met her gaze, held it to show he was serious. She sighed, wide eyes drooping slightly as lids became heavy and shadowed her pupils._

_“It’s over.” He knew she was talking about her first real relationship (none of this ‘special’ crap, they called each other boyfriend and girlfriend and everything) having ended. His expression changed to one of pity, and she shook her head to indicate ‘no’._

_“It’s OK. I’m good…I’m just…sorry, that’s all. I’ve been neglecting you, and you don’t like it.” Her head pointed down, in shame._

_It was his turn to be firm in his negation. “No. No, Meryl, absolutely not. If anybody has a reason to feel bad it’s me, and I do! Don’t you see? I—expected you to take care of me all this time—I mean,” he tried to backtrack, but the damage was done._

_“You feel like all I do is take care of you? Charlie, we’re friends. It’s_ mutual _! You don’t just have one person doing things for the other, you both do stuff for each other!”_

_“Oh yeah? Then what do I do for you—name one thing.” He resented the fact that he was turning her first breakup into a psychological meltdown on his behalf but he was too heated to let what was going dissipate, never to be spoken of again, their unspoken rule: don’t revisit past ghosts. What’s done is done. It’s why Charlie was so adamant that Meryl not beat herself up after a rough practice. It’s why she insisted that he not let his day at the rink be affected by a squirrel he’d hit in the road on the way to Arctic Edge. It was sad, she acknowledged that, and he knew how much she loved animals…he did too!...but what had happened had happened, and it does not do to dwell on dreams._

_“Don’t be ridiculous.” The next lines flowed off of her tongue like water. “You make sure I have fun, that what I do is done because I love it and not because I need it. You drive me places because I hate getting behind a wheel. You make sure I don’t go to bed at night without hearing how beautiful I—you think—I am. You share beds with me at away competitions when it’s thunder storming because I always hated the sound.”_

_“Mmm, I don’t think so,” he cut in, amusedly. His lips twitched but he pursed them to refrain from smiling. “That’s me, remember?” Charlie. Hated. Rain._

_Her reply was soft and almost came across as a confession, but of what, he’d not find out until later._

_“I used to hate thunderstorms too…not anymore.”_

_His breath caught in his throat._

**Sandwiches hard as rocks**

_“And that,” she finished proudly, with a flourish, “is how you make a proper PB & J.”_

_He stared at her, blankly._

_“Charles Allen, were you paying attention at_ all? _”_

_Sheepishly he held his hands upturned as if to say, ‘what can you do?’ She rolled her eyes._

_“Now that we’ve both been accepted into Michigan, I think it’s high time that you learn how to cook. And since we know that’s off the table, basic sandwiching 101 will have to suffice.”_

_“Speaking of college…do we even know if that’s a word? And on that note, do you know how sad it is that you—as a dyslexic—graduated with a higher GPA than me?”_

_“We’ve been over this. I’ve always been smarter than you, see? It just took awhile to be able to write it down in all its glory.”_

_“You have earned yourself arsenic in your sandwich, m’lady.”_

_“You see one Shakespeare play and think you’re fit for Victorian England. Remind me to never bring you to the theatre again?”_

_“Shut up—you bring me everywhere and you know it.”_

_“Well we’ll certainly have to continue going out to eat as often as we already do because_ someone can’t master the art of putting peanut butter and jelly on a slice of bread _!”_

_“We’re not all as gifted and talented as you, Mer.”_

_“Well, since you recognize it now…go pick a movie? I’ll finish our gourmet meals, don’t you worry your pretty little head.”_

**Lunch was the happiest 45 minutes of the day**

_True to her word and despite the sorority sisters she’d obtained in her meager three months at the school, Meryl without fail left campus with Charlie once a week to engage in some fine dining._

_  
And by fine dining, she decided, she meant the classiest pizza that a ten could buy them. It cost more to buy a textbook for one course than a new pair of skates! And once you break those in, you can use them a heck of a lot longer. Oh, the real world was going to be fun…after she got her gold medal, of course._

_Then life could restart (with, hopefully, a certain blond goof by her side just like the first time around.)_

**For the redheaded angel would glide your way and say**

_“Never again.”_

_Or, his immediate reply to a picture text she sent him after a slumber party at tri-delta. She sported a tangled red wig, no doubt from a mermaid costume, and the caption read, “to match the Phantom dress?”_

_OK, so it hadn’t been_ exactly _immediate. He had paused, smiled wistfully…and then shook his head, telling himself to snap out of it. Part of being her partner meant telling her the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth, even if it meant crushing her dreams of looking like Ariel. (though she fit the bill of other Disney princesses, he argued, to her bashful flattery). Even if she was just kidding, it was his job to make sure. After all, they were on the_ Olympic track _!_

**"Hello, hello, Charlie hello**

**Hello, hello, Charlie hello**

**Hello, hello, Charlie hello**

**Hello, hello Charlie hello"**

_It wasn’t until after their second games, the victorious ones, where they collected coveted medals gold and bronze to complete their varied trio, that Meryl and Charlie wised up and stepped out of the shells of their comfort zones._

_She checked her resolve and finding no traces of sanity, proceeded to stroll towards her newly crowned Olympic Champion/best friend (hopefully more, given a few minutes)._

_Catching him completely off guard, she closed her eyes and planted a wobbly kiss on the side of his mouth. The goal was to aim for this ambiguous spot, and if he turned to give her his cheek she could play it off as bundles of nerves and energy. Alternatively (and this was ideal), he would turn to kiss her full on, and no explanations would be necessary, because they’d never really needed words, and surely this wouldn’t be an exception._

_She didn’t_ want _to play games, per se; she’d never been intuitive as other girls and it drove her crazy to psychoanalyze every behavior, but they’d been playing the game for the past seventeen years, hadn’t they? It was time to further their relationship. It was the natural shift._

_So she bit the bullet and before he could squeak out a Charlie-ism, Meryl’s lips were on his. Had she even followed the plan one bit, or just, caught up herself in the moment, went straight for the object of her desires? Whatever flaw in the foolproof plan, it had worked, to say the least. Charlie eagerly pressed her body flush up against a wall in the vacant hallway._

_“About time,” he muttered, going on to worship the expanse of skin from her earlobe to her collarbone._

_She brushed a lock of unruly hair from the forefront of his eye distractedly. “Hello, Charlie,” she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper._

_He cocked a sideways smile. “Hello.”_


End file.
